Steel mills producing large coils of sheet stock store their inventory on the floors of huge warehouses. The large, heavy coils are picked and placed using overhead cranes, often referred to as bridge cranes. These cranes ride the length of the building along two, parallel rails. A hoist moves on the trolley and lowers a hook or other mechanical grabber to move objects. Operators control the crane’s movement via an overhead control cabin or by remote-control from on manufacturing floor.

A zip-line consists of a pulley suspended on a cable mounted on an incline. It is designed to enable a user, propelled by gravity, to traverse from the top to the bottom of the inclined cable by holding on or attaching to the freely moving pulley. Zip-line tours are becoming popular vacation activities and ride managers often implement a high speed camera system to photograph riders during their decent.

A new manufacturer of foundation testing equipment developed the PileTrac Pile Set Monitor (PSM). The system improves the process for collecting and reporting pile set measurements during pile driving. Pile set is used to confirm pile driving requirements and for input into signal matching programs for prediction of static pile capacity.

A global manufacturer of fibreglass-based asphalt roofing shingles requested a demonstration of the AR1000 laser distance sensor to improve the performance of their production lines. The roofing shingle product is a laminated material produced in a continuous process where long stretches of material are draped between rollers while the material cures and is advanced towards automatic cutting stations.

A major North American propeller manufacturer and service company selected a long-range triangulation sensor to measure the profile of its propellers and controllable tip blades during the manufacturing process. Non-contact measuring, like that afforded by laser sensors, is desirable in propeller manufacturing because the fixed measuring device can be installed with a large standoff away from bulky and/or moving parts.

A recent journey to India brings us a novel application for a laser distance sensor. Even in a part of the world that tends to value the manual efforts of its laborforce, there is a strong recognition for precision, non-contact measurements afforded by the latest in sensor technology.

The National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University uses a laser sensor in a system to measure the alignment of detectors. A full presentation of the project can be accessed from their website.

Un-manned Autonomous Vehicle (UAV) projects depend on sensors to provide spatial information for route planning and crash avoidance. A developer of an un-manned airplane selected AR3000 distance sensors to measure the height above the ground, whether it was the landing strip, grass, trees or mountains. They needed a sensor that could measure long distances to surfaces of different reflectivities.